Motels and Martha Davis headline 'Totally '80s' show at Z-Plex in Streetsboro

View full sizeMartha Davis, lead singer and songwriter for the 1980s group the Motels, brings the newest incarnation of the band, the Motels, featuring Martha Davis, to the Z-Plex, inside Stringz & Wingz in Streetsboro, tonight. Itâs part of a three-band âTotally â80sâ show, featuring Davisâ group, Bow Wow Wow and Gene Loves Jezebel.Â ÂBrian Tirney

The 1980s had a couple of things going for the period, No. 1 being that the era wasn’t the ’70s, and No. 2 being the arrival of MTV.

Back when the cable network really WAS Music Television — not reality shows and so forth — we got a chance for the first time to see individual songs come to life. We also got to SEE our musical heroes without waiting for them to come in concert or appear on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

Martha Davis, the object of many a young man’s crush back then as the voice, face and soul of the Motels, calls the era “the good old daze – d-a-z-e.”

Davis, whose band is now called the Motels, featuring Martha Davis, brings a bit of those daze, er, DAYS to Northeast Ohio tonight [cya: June 28 : ]when she and the band play the Z-Plex in Streetsboro as the headliner of an event called “Totally ’80s.” Also on the bill: Bow Wow Wow and Gene Loves Jezebel.

So the first thing everyone wants to know about someone who was a star 30 years ago is, “Where the heck have you been?”

For Davis, that’s easy. She’s been on her farm in Oregon, right outside Portland, gigging occasionally and loving the life.

“Right now, I’m looking up at a cloudy sky on my beautiful farm and watching the pigs gallop around,” said Davis in a call to her home. A Berkeley, Calif., native, with a true Earth Mother bent, Davis went green decades ago, about the time her band’s biggest song, “Only the Lonely,” hit the charts.

“I’m kind of a dirt girl,” said Davis. “I’ve always been an outdoor kind of tomboy.” Not content to confine herself to a simple backyard garden, Davis went big with the ranch. Right now, it’s home to cows, pigs, llamas, ducks, six dogs and a white donkey named Bunny.

Those baby ducks are the beneficiaries of a career highlighted by such songs as “Only the Lonely” and “Suddenly Last Summer” as well as eight studio albums, two live albums and four solo albums. But it’s a new world now, and that’s why Davis spells days d-a-z-e.

“Technology is bringing fabulous things to the world in terms of being able to make a record in your house, and that’s great,” she said. “The down side is that royalties have plummeted, because people don’t buy the same way.”

Listeners buy a 99-cent song vs. a $15 album, and the revenues are practically nil.

“The whole deal now is people have to go out, get a song in a commercial, get a song in a movie or wear strange clothes, like Lady Gaga,” she said, laughing.

Of course, she’s not delusional as to the misdeeds of the record-label system back in her day.

“As shady as record companies were and still are, as much as there are a lot of bad deals, I was lucky to be singing to Capitol Records when it was full of amazing guys and gals — although the gals weren’t too prominent then,” she said. “We’re a classic example of how great that label was. We had two albums, a third that they turned down, and they still stuck with us for a fourth.”

Nowadays, she said, artists are signed for a song, and if that one song doesn’t perform, whack! You’re done.

But she wouldn’t change a thing, really, and it’s mainly because she still loves performing.

“I’m telling you, it’s way more fun,” she said. “My band is amazing and hilarious and wonderful. We kind of kick ass. The thing you should know about the Motels is that we rock pretty hard,” she said.

“There’s the moody stuff, the ballad stuff, but there’s a lot of good old-fashioned rock ’n’ roll.”

Related Stories

CONCERT CALENDAR

What are the big concerts coming to Northeast Ohio this year? Search this database to find upcoming concert schedules and event information at more than 20 major venues in Greater Cleveland, Akron and beyond. ... Read more»

Follow Us

cleveland.com is powered by Plain Dealer Publishing Co. and Northeast Ohio Media Group. All rights reserved (About Us).The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Northeast Ohio Media Group LLC.